Thinking about the design elements of serious games and
simulations is not as complex as you might believe.
Educational simulations are a broad genre of immersive learning
simulations focused on increasing participants' mastery level in
the real world. They differ from computer games in that their goal
is not to be fun for participants (although they do engender a
level of engagement).
Instead, educational simulations are part of a formal learning
program and are built primarily to nurture specific learning goals
in participants, while adhering to program goals to achieve desired
results.
Yet as with all simulations, educational simulations require
participants to develop real skills, and do so through emergent
learning. They can be single player, multiplayer, or massively
multiplayer, and include many genres.
Branching stories
Branching stories require learners to make a series of decisions
through a series of multiple choices to progress through an event
(or story) that develops in different ways according to the choices
each learner makes.
Specifically, learners start with a briefing. They then advance to
a first multiple-choice decision point, or branch. Based on the
decision or action they make (such as "I'll take the red pill" or
"I'll take the blue pill"), they see a scene that provides some
feedback, advances the story, and then sets up another decision;
learners continue making decisions until they reach either a
successful or unsuccessful final state.
The simplicity of the interface is both branching stories' greatest
strength and their greatest weakness. Their ease of use, ease of
deployment, use of discrete decisions, and dynamic visual content
style make them highly appropriate for reluctant learners.
Interactive spreadsheets
This genre typically has learners try to impact three or four
critical metrics (primary variables) indirectly by allocating
finite resources (money, time, good will, swag) among competing
categories over a series of turns or intervals.
Learners get feedback on their decisions through graphs and charts.
The entire simulation might continue for anywhere from three to 20
intervals. For example, the head of a not-for-pro?t organization
might try to optimize the variables of funding and community impact
by allocating each week's working time among such categories as
fundraising, creating new services, or sleeping.
Interactive spreadsheets are often done in a multiplayer or
team-based environment, with significant competition between
learners, and often with a coach or facilitator. Interactive
spreadsheets typically focus on business school issues such as
policy, supply chain management, product life cycle, accounting,
and general cross-functional business acumen, which are their
historical roots.
Despite the genre name, spreadsheets are not a realistic platform
for deploying these models, although they may be used in the design
document. The genre's subtlety, unpredictability, and variability
make it appropriate for training b-school students and
high-potential supervisors up to and including direct reports to
the CEO.
Interactive diagrams
In interactive diagrams the entire screen display becomes a living,
organic visual diagram of key concepts, relationships, and
patterns.
Interactive diagrams are often used in school programs to show, for
example, food webs or how Congress works. The content is heavily
layered. Arrows and graphs typically pepper the display. Control
buttons and throttles present options to players. Interactive
diagrams themselves become a model and pedagogy to apply to
real-life situations.
Usually without trying to achieve any victory conditions, learners
begin to understand at a gut level what a piece of data means and
how it relates to other data. The interface is simple and
immediate, even if the relationships are complex.
Virtual products
With virtual products a collection of simulation elements creates a
high-fidelity, virtual model of a real-world item. Participants can
play around with these items or test hypotheses regarding their
behavior.
Virtual products have many advantages over their real-world
counterparts, including ease of transportation and in fact
ubiquitous availability, freedom from physical limits such as
cool-down times and little pieces that break, and annotations as to
internal workings.
As with interactive diagrams, virtual products have neither tasks
nor levels. Participants require intrinsic motivation or they won't
bother with them.
Virtual labs
In this type of educational simulation genre, participants engage a
virtual product in an experience structured by tasks and goals to
learn about using some real-world item to solve problems or
complete products (rather than just to explore what it does). For
example, a learner may have to repair a Geiger counter in three
minutes or less to pass.
In more complex virtual labs, with each subsequent level, a student
may receive less and less helpful information, such as no longer
having access to an x-ray view, or may have to face more
complicated situations. Virtual labs are often used for formal
learning experiences that result in certification, and are
successful in the learning goal of application of new content.
Practiceware
Practiceware encourages participants to repeat actions in
high-fidelity real-time (often 3D) situations until the skills
become natural in the real-world counterpart.
The?rst practiceware genre was the flight simulator, used for
training pilots. Today, practiceware has been developed for a
variety of big skills. The interface constantly presents
participants with five to 20 different actions, aligned with
real-world options. Many of them require mastery of split-second
timing (when to do an action) and magnitude (how hard to do an
action).
Virtual experience spaces
With the genre of virtual experience spaces, learners role-play
practice some real-world skill, such as consulting or creation of
intellectual property, or even disaster recovery using web-based
materials as props.
Using relatively common-place web technology, instructors can
create scalable fictitious situations using large linked,
state-based multimedia repositories to explore. The elements can
include emails, video interviews with the CEO or other clips, and
PowerPoint presentations, all accessed through a common portal.
Here's the key: only certain links in the repository are available
at the start of the role play. As it proceeds, new links open up
based on different types of triggers, typically time and contacts.
At intervals, the instructor (or the simulation on its own) opens
up links that create the effect of time passing. This could simply
represent the start of a new week or, more dramatically, the
occurrence of an external event such as a hostile takeover or the
death of a senior executive (which may change the mission).
By accessing this type of space, consultants can learn enough to
create recommendations, projects, and plans, even introducing
fictitious characters to each other. The resulting products can
then be evaluated by real humans for all sorts of projects -
evacuation plans, new websites, IT infrastructure, and strategic
plans.
Thinking about the design elements of serious games and
simulations is not as complex as you might believe.
Educational simulations are a broad genre of immersive learning
simulations focused on increasing participants' mastery level in
the real world. They differ from computer games in that their goal
is not to be fun for participants (although they do engender a
level of engagement).
Instead, educational simulations are part of a formal learning
program and are built primarily to nurture specific learning goals
in participants, while adhering to program goals to achieve desired
results.
Yet as with all simulations, educational simulations require
participants to develop real skills, and do so through emergent
learning. They can be single player, multiplayer, or massively
multiplayer, and include many genres.
Branching stories
Branching stories require learners to make a series of decisions
through a series of multiple choices to progress through an event
(or story) that develops in different ways according to the choices
each learner makes.
Specifically, learners start with a briefing. They then advance to
a first multiple-choice decision point, or branch. Based on the
decision or action they make (such as "I'll take the red pill" or
"I'll take the blue pill"), they see a scene that provides some
feedback, advances the story, and then sets up another decision;
learners continue making decisions until they reach either a
successful or unsuccessful final state.
The simplicity of the interface is both branching stories' greatest
strength and their greatest weakness. Their ease of use, ease of
deployment, use of discrete decisions, and dynamic visual content
style make them highly appropriate for reluctant learners.
Interactive spreadsheets
This genre typically has learners try to impact three or four
critical metrics (primary variables) indirectly by allocating
finite resources (money, time, good will, swag) among competing
categories over a series of turns or intervals.
Learners get feedback on their decisions through graphs and charts.
The entire simulation might continue for anywhere from three to 20
intervals. For example, the head of a not-for-pro?t organization
might try to optimize the variables of funding and community impact
by allocating each week's working time among such categories as
fundraising, creating new services, or sleeping.
Interactive spreadsheets are often done in a multiplayer or
team-based environment, with significant competition between
learners, and often with a coach or facilitator. Interactive
spreadsheets typically focus on business school issues such as
policy, supply chain management, product life cycle, accounting,
and general cross-functional business acumen, which are their
historical roots.
Despite the genre name, spreadsheets are not a realistic platform
for deploying these models, although they may be used in the design
document. The genre's subtlety, unpredictability, and variability
make it appropriate for training b-school students and
high-potential supervisors up to and including direct reports to
the CEO.
Interactive diagrams
In interactive diagrams the entire screen display becomes a living,
organic visual diagram of key concepts, relationships, and
patterns.
Interactive diagrams are often used in school programs to show, for
example, food webs or how Congress works. The content is heavily
layered. Arrows and graphs typically pepper the display. Control
buttons and throttles present options to players. Interactive
diagrams themselves become a model and pedagogy to apply to
real-life situations.
Usually without trying to achieve any victory conditions, learners
begin to understand at a gut level what a piece of data means and
how it relates to other data. The interface is simple and
immediate, even if the relationships are complex.
Virtual products
With virtual products a collection of simulation elements creates a
high-fidelity, virtual model of a real-world item. Participants can
play around with these items or test hypotheses regarding their
behavior.
Virtual products have many advantages over their real-world
counterparts, including ease of transportation and in fact
ubiquitous availability, freedom from physical limits such as
cool-down times and little pieces that break, and annotations as to
internal workings.
As with interactive diagrams, virtual products have neither tasks
nor levels. Participants require intrinsic motivation or they won't
bother with them.
Virtual labs
In this type of educational simulation genre, participants engage a
virtual product in an experience structured by tasks and goals to
learn about using some real-world item to solve problems or
complete products (rather than just to explore what it does). For
example, a learner may have to repair a Geiger counter in three
minutes or less to pass.
In more complex virtual labs, with each subsequent level, a student
may receive less and less helpful information, such as no longer
having access to an x-ray view, or may have to face more
complicated situations. Virtual labs are often used for formal
learning experiences that result in certification, and are
successful in the learning goal of application of new content.
Practiceware
Practiceware encourages participants to repeat actions in
high-fidelity real-time (often 3D) situations until the skills
become natural in the real-world counterpart.
The?rst practiceware genre was the flight simulator, used for
training pilots. Today, practiceware has been developed for a
variety of big skills. The interface constantly presents
participants with five to 20 different actions, aligned with
real-world options. Many of them require mastery of split-second
timing (when to do an action) and magnitude (how hard to do an
action).
Virtual experience spaces
With the genre of virtual experience spaces, learners role-play
practice some real-world skill, such as consulting or creation of
intellectual property, or even disaster recovery using web-based
materials as props.
Using relatively common-place web technology, instructors can
create scalable fictitious situations using large linked,
state-based multimedia repositories to explore. The elements can
include emails, video interviews with the CEO or other clips, and
PowerPoint presentations, all accessed through a common portal.
Here's the key: only certain links in the repository are available
at the start of the role play. As it proceeds, new links open up
based on different types of triggers, typically time and contacts.
At intervals, the instructor (or the simulation on its own) opens
up links that create the effect of time passing. This could simply
represent the start of a new week or, more dramatically, the
occurrence of an external event such as a hostile takeover or the
death of a senior executive (which may change the mission).
By accessing this type of space, consultants can learn enough to
create recommendations, projects, and plans, even introducing
fictitious characters to each other. The resulting products can
then be evaluated by real humans for all sorts of projects -
evacuation plans, new websites, IT infrastructure, and strategic
plans.
Clark Aldrich is co-founder and lead developer for SimuLearn;
clark.aldrich@gmail.com.
This article has been excerpted from The Complete Guide to
Simulations and Serious Games by Clark Aldrich, available from
Jossey-Bass.